Gertude O'Brady started to paint shortly brfore the 2nd World War. She had suffered a severe illness shortly before travelling to Paris and, once there, she was given a box of paints to help take her mind off her suffering.

Incredibly, in two years she painted over sixty paintings of breathtaking quality. Indeed, her legacy was built on these works so that today she is generally regarded as the second greatest naive painter (Rosseau is, of course, the first).

She was sent to a concentration camp when the US entered the war. She couldn't paint as she was given only pencil to work with but drew the suffering of her fellow inmates to powerful effect.

When she was released she stopped painting and drawing. She relapsed into her old illness.